Even at the best of times, the world can be a pretty confusing and distressing place. And when you’re struggling with something, it particularly sucks to look for a little breathing space in the wider world only to see what looks like doom and gloom on the horizon in every direction. From our work at TIGER - and our own experiences - we know a huge number of young people face pressures, expectations, bullying and other stresses around their gender and sexuality. If you’ve been facing this and asked for help, you might have been told that you're not alone, or that it gets better. And that's true! But we understand that sometimes just hearing that isn’t enough, because when you look for the evidence, you seem to find even more fear and unhappiness.

The news often seems terrifying and it's OK to be worried that things are really getting worse. It can seem like people are always talking about the latest crisis, so when they tell you things will be OK, it can be hard to believe they mean it. But here's what you've got to remember - Whatever's in the news, or trending on Facebook, or the #hashtag of the day on Twitter, it doesn't tell you the whole story. You might be seeing and hearing lots of worrying stuff, but it doesn’t mean that good stuff isn’t happening - It just means the bad stuff is getting all the attention.

Bad stuff gets more chatter than good stuff, that’s an actual fact. Humans are odd creatures and they seem to prefer sharing bad news more than good (unless it’s cat videos). There’s lots of reasons for that, and a quick Google for ‘why does bad news get more attention than good news’ will turn up plenty of theories about why it happens. The important thing to remember is that when all you’re hearing is worrying and scary, it’s because people just talk about that more. The good things are out there, the evidence that things will get better, or that you aren’t alone - They just might not be so obvious.

Things often look worse than they are - But that doesn’t mean you’re over reacting if you’re scared or struggling. If you’re drowning and looking for a life raft, the atmosphere in the news and in people’s conversations recently can look more like a storm cloud, but the reality isn’t all storms. What we want you to know is that if something’s wrong, there are people out there who are fighting your corner, who understand your feelings, who don’t think you should have to feel that way - They just aren’t in the spotlight. We really hope that reading this has reassured you that it’s not all bad news out there. They might not be making the headlines, but there’s plenty of people around who don’t agree with sexism, transphobia, homophobia, or any other kind of discrimination or injustice, and they want to make things better for you, in the future and right now.

(If you’re struggling and need a hand, our Support page has links to lots of great people who can help you out.)

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At TIGER we're always excited to hear from you, whether you've been to one of our workshops, you've got one coming up, or even if you've just found us online!

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